Girl's Clothes

Little Women:

For centuries, little girls dressed like little versions of their mothers. This dressing of children as miniature adults in every detail continued until the early C18th. Formal paintings often show children in developing countries silk clothes with skirts supported by Panier and multiple petticoats.

Silk is an important substance as it was used by the richest in society to show their wealth through their clothing. Poorer people, whether adult or a child wearing a simpler practical clothes made of flax, cotton, wool and less coarse fibers out of practical necessity.

Silk Fabrics:

In the late 1600s the English textile industry began to produce cheaper silk in United Kingdom in Spitalfields part of London. It was because the persecuted Huguenot designers and weavers fled to the United Kingdom. They brought their excellent silk production vessels with them to the east end of London. These refugees were able to reproduce the highly ornate patterns previously derived from the continent to greater costs. So wealthy children were dressed sumptuously as many family portraits suggest. Poor children dressed in tattered hand-me downs or clothes made of coarse wool and coarse cotton or blends like fustian.

Less formality in C18th Dress for Kids:

As C18th progressed dress for both girls and boys were less formal and less rigid, replaced by more practical comfortable clothing that children can move around in. With the rise of the industrial revolution and relatively cheap manufactured cotton goods children began to wear lighter weight soft washable cotton .

Aprons:

Regency, Victorian and Edwardian girls all dressed in aprons and smocks to cover up and keep clean their dresses. The size of the decoration of the dresses, aprons and aprons depended on occasion. Party dresses are made of fine lace and heavily trimmed were decorated with embroidery and delicious.

Girl's clothes in the early 1800s:

Of 1800s clothes were more casual in appearance, but the same was fashionable for adults in this era.

As C19th moved on, children's fashion was often in imitation of adults, but has never been so heavy as in former times. In mid-Victorian era children's clothing was often played in fashion magazines and ultimately about fashion plates. 

A common feature of many of the C19th was an under / outer garment called a mortgage loan easier.

Typical Early C19th Fabrics and Fashion Elements:

Children at the beginning of the 1800s:

In the early 1800s, so it as quickly as they drove around, girls wore dresses muslin, dotted Swiss, white percale, lawn and nankeen - a yellow, buff-colored fabric from China. Empire line dresses after the fashion of the day was normal. Simple lightweight muslin dress styles with a high cut empire line in the upper seam in the beginning of the 1800s were worn with a slip. The dress was drawn together with a ribbon or sash just below the chest.

These dresses right in the painting called 'The Sisters' circa 1800, is very typical of muslin and fine lawn way that adults in the early C19th bar. (This painting is attributed to John Opie from 1761 to 1807 and also John Höppner from 1758 to 1810)

Fashion for children after 1825:

In 1825, the fashion-conscious elements that had crept back into the styles and the girls soon, so as young adults again.

Fashion crew returned with a vengeance in the Romantic era. Profuse decoration in the form of ruffles, flounces, and fur trims the waist moving down the same way as adults dress had was topped by ornate hats and caps. The gigot sleeves of adult women was repeated in the styles of girl's dresses.

The skirt length of the individual child was a sign of her age. This beautiful way plate on the right is from a book sold by an antiquarian bookseller Fashion Books Jon Edgson on eBay. This picture shows children in 1837, and you can see how close these children look like little adults in the era.

As children's clothing has evolved over time, so too have children costumes. Today there are many opportunities for consumers to choose when it comes to costumes for children. A major source is Halloween Express.

Skirt lengths and Hoop Victorian Styles for young girls:

In C18th all girls dressed floor length dresses. In the early 1800s girls began getting their skirts shortened. A seventeen and eighteen girl was considered to be a young lady and wore skirts land length and adult women did. Most sixteen year old wore dresses to the ankles, a fourteen year old skirts to calf, but a 12 year old wearing dresses to just below the knee.

Not even the youngest child escaped wearing a Crinoline Supported skirt. By the 1840s these skirts were true Crinoline style. They were pushed out with stiff starched petticoats and Horsehair Crin fabric skirts in layers. Later, a wire cage hoop Crinoline, a mini-version of the adult crinolines, liberated young, as it made light work of the job. 

This image is of a fashion plate dated 1863 from the fashion and books on eBay.

Pants and Pant relieved:

Modesty meant that all the girls wearing long, full-length trousers under these skirts, so that the spectators who flashes of white lace frill peeping under the bottom. 

A breeze or gust of wind can easily tip a Crinoline out of balance and leg shows, but those fully clothed in broderie anglaise. Even the poor followed this way and used a simpler leg covering of white linen or cotton frilled tubes, which were called the mortgage easier.

The visibility of these elements, there was indeed a fad. Others considered included visible underwear drawers with attachment legs for easy money and make room for expansion.

This image is of a fashion plate dated 1863 and from stock maintained at fashion books on eBay.

Polonaise Styles:

Like Crinoline Adult dress moved toward the garment back, so did Crinoline the little girl dresses. When the adults bustle became fashionable young women wearing long dresses loops on a false pleated skirt.

This fashion and variations of it for 30 years or thereabouts. This fashion plate from 1881 to the right is from a book sold out of fashion books on eBay.

It shows how the dress of the girls came slimmer styles in the early 1880s. As time went on, continuing this style, but with the upper part of the dress often bloused over a deep drop waist sash. It ushered in the S-bend Pouce blouse adult styles of the Edwardian woman.

At the time of the other girls are busy at times had a softer, less restrictive polonaise lighter weight version. Despite the fact that there was often a strong resemblance to adult female dress there is no doubt that the clothes for girls, but still restrictive by today's standards became progressively easier and less cumbersome.

C19th Children's Fashion FAD - Tartan and Sailor Looks

Different FAD of clothes covered with a love of plaid or sailor elements. If you click on the thumbnail to the right the left you will see the tartan dress more clearly. This children's fashion history is typical of books sold by the UK sells Jon Edgson fashionable Bookshop on eBay.

Sailor styles in various forms was especially popular when the sea trip was the norm. 

Great style sailor collars and contrasting rows of braiding decorated both girls and boys clothing during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.

Quartermaster jackets were also worn over a plastron Dickey false front in place of a full blouse. These last two illustrations show the high collars and jabots.

Early C20th Edwardian Fashions for Girls:

Ornate frilled dresses for girls aged 5 or more were popular in the early Edwardian years. Often dresses had a highly frilled yoke and either a floating dress skirt, which ended in a frill, or a bloused upper.

The dress can be either loosely bloused or in bundles with a wing to a low waist blouse effect. Flounces were popular for skirts as layers or as a decorative trim.

Hats:

Whole C19th girls dressed in beautiful flowers and ribbon trimmed hats and bonnets always reach the door. On occasion, when dressed for school, outdoor walking or when wearing sailor dresses, they also wore berets or tam-finished pompom O'SHANTER. Left girl wearing a red coat and a tam O'SHANTER in 1916. 

Children's costume color pages in this section reflect the many different clothing styles that girls usually went through Regency, Victorian and Edwardian eras.